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  • Interdisciplinarity: Practi...
    Annan-Diab, Fatima; Molinari, Carolina

    International journal of management education, July 2017, 2017-07-00, Volume: 15, Issue: 2
    Journal Article

    The need for a more sustainable world was unanimously acknowledged by United Nations members in September 2015, when 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were set, positioning education at the heart of the strategy to promote sustainable development. This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary approach to education for sustainable development, and to illustrate how to advance it, acknowledging different perspectives of sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of diversity. It examines the broad agenda of the SDGs, which requires the participation of multiple disciplines and sectors to be delivered. Considering the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), the paper reviews the literature regarding interdisciplinarity and its application in education for sustainable development, including practices and barriers to enhance it. A case study is provided to illustrate how to advance interdisciplinary education for sustainable development amongst postgraduate MBA students from different backgrounds, in a course where sustainable development concepts are already embedded across disciplines. The case illustrates the application of the Six Principles of PRME and explains how a sustainability and CSR module can encourage students to combine knowledge from all disciplines in order to advance their understanding and action on sustainable development issues. •Implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals requires interdisciplinarity.•Barriers to enhance interdisciplinarity include limited knowledge base and time.•Sustainability education necessitates tailoring teaching to students' backgrounds.•Management education benefits from embedding sustainability across disciplines.•PRME has contributed to advance understanding of sustainable development issues.